A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT pot

A HISTORY OF FREEDOM
OF THOUGHT
CONTENTS
CHAP.


I Introductory
II Reason Free (Greece And Rome)
III Reason in Prison (The Middle Ages)
IV Prospect of Deliverance (The Renaissance and the Reformation)
V Religious Toleration
VI The Growth of Rationalism (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)
VII The Progress of Rationalism (Nineteenth Century)
VIII The Justification of Liberty of Thought

Bibliography

Index
A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
CHAPTER I
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND THE FORCES AGAINST IT
(INTRODUCTORY)
IT is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from
thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of
his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his
imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is
unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to
communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbours.
Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind.
If a man’s thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the
behaviour of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of

life than those they follow, it is almostimpossible for him, if he is convinced of the
truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude
that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Some have preferred,
like Socrates, some would prefer to-day, to face death rather than conceal their
thoughts. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.
At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of
course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on
it as a natural right. But this right has been acquired only in quite recent times, and the
way to its attainment has lain through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries to
persuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one’s opinions and to
discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing. Human societies (there are some
brilliant exceptions) have been generally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other
words, to new ideas, and it is easy to see why.
The average brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The
mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without
questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively hostile to anything
which would upset the established order of this familiar world. A new idea,
inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the necessity of
rearranging his mind; and this process is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of
brain-energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new ideas, and
opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because
they are disagreeable.
The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive feeling of
fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservative doctrine that the
foundations of society are endangered by any alterations in the structure. It is only
recently that men have been abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends
on rigid stability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged.
Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as
annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the
wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person.

The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is its consequence,
are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure, including the whole body of
customs and opinions, is associated intimately with religious belief and is supposed to
be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while
criticism of the religious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernatural
powers.
The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile to new ideas
are reinforced by the active opposition of certain powerful sections of the community,
such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood, whose interests are bound up with the
maintenance of the established order and the ideas on which it rests.
Let us suppose, for instance, that a people believes that solar eclipses are signs
employed by their Deity for the special purpose of communicating useful information
to them, and that a clever man discovers the true cause of eclipses. His compatriots in
the first place dislike his discovery because they find it very difficult to reconcile with
their other ideas; in the second place, it disturbs them, because it upsets an
arrangement which they consider highly advantageous to their community; finally, it
frightens them, as an offence to their Divinity. The priests, one of whose functions is
to interpret the divine signs, are alarmed and enraged at a doctrine which menaces
their power.
In prehistoric days, these motives, operating strongly, must have made change slow
in communities which progressed, and hindered some communities from progressing
at all. But they have continued to operate more or less throughout history, obstructing
knowledge and progress. We can observe them at work to-day even in the most
advanced societies, where they have no longer the power to arrest development or
repress the publication of revolutionary opinions. We still meet people who consider a
new idea an annoyance and probably a danger. Of those to whom socialism is
repugnant, how many are there who have never examined the arguments for and
against it, but turn away in disgust simply because the notion disturbs their mental
universe and implies a drastic criticism on the order of things to which they are
accustomed? And how many are there who would refuse to consider any proposals for

altering our imperfect matrimonial institutions, because such an idea offends a mass of
prejudice associated with religious sanctions? They may be right or not, but if they
are, it is not their fault. They are actuated by the same motives which were a bar to
progress in primitive societies. The existence of people of this mentality, reared in an
atmosphere of freedom, side by side with others who are always looking out for new
ideas and regretting that there are not more about, enables us to realize how, when
public opinion was formed by the views of such men, thought was fettered and the
impediments to knowledge enormous.
Although the liberty to publish one’s opinions on any subject without regard to
authority or the prejudices of one’s neighbours is now a well-established principle, I
imagine that only the minority of those who would be ready to fight to the death rather
than surrender it could defend it on rational grounds. We are apt to take for granted
that freedom of speech is a natural and inalienable birthright of man, and perhaps to
think that this is a sufficient answer to all that can be said on the other side. But it is
difficult to see how such a right can be established.
If a man has any “natural rights,” the right to preserve his life and the right to
reproduce his kind are certainly such. Yet human societies impose upon their
members restrictions in the exercise of both these rights. A starving man is prohibited
from taking food which belongs to somebody else. Promiscuous reproduction is
restricted by various laws or customs. It is admitted that society is justified in
restricting these elementary rights, because without such restrictions an ordered
society could not exist. If then we concede that the expression of opinion is a right of
the same kind, it is impossible to contend that on this ground it can claim immunity
from interference or that society acts unjustly in regulating it. But the concession is
too large. For whereas in the other cases the limitations affect the conduct of every
one, restrictions on freedom of opinion affect only the comparatively small number
who have any opinions, revolutionary or unconventional, to express. The truth is that
no valid argument can be founded on the conception of natural rights, because it
involves an untenable theory of the relations between society and its members.
On the other hand, those who have the responsibility of governing a society can

argue that it is as incumbent on them to prohibit the circulation of pernicious opinions
as to prohibit any anti-social actions. They can argue that a man may do far more
harm by propagating anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbour’s horse or
making love to his neighbour’s wife. They are responsible for the welfare of the State,
and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous, by menacing the political,
religious, or moral assumptions on which the society is based, it is their duty to protect
society against it, as against any other danger.
The true answer to this argument for limiting freedom of thought will appear in due
course. It was far from obvious. A long time was needed to arrive at the conclusion
that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and only a part of the world is yet convinced.
That conclusion, so far as I can judge, is the most important ever reached by men. It
was the issue of a continuous struggle between authority and reason—the subject of
this volume. The word authority requires some comment.
If you ask somebody how he knows something, he may say, “I have it on good
authority,” or, “I read it in a book,” or, “It is a matter of common knowledge,” or, “I
learned it at school.” Any of these replies means that he has accepted information
from others, trusting in their knowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking
the matter out for himself. And the greater part of most men’s knowledge and beliefs
is of this kind, taken without verification from their parents, teachers, acquaintances,
books, newspapers. When an English boy learns French, he takes the conjugations and
the meanings of the words on the authority of his teacher or his grammar. The fact that
in a certain place, marked on the map, there is a populous city called Calcutta, is for
most people a fact accepted on authority. So is the existence of Napoleon or Julius
Caesar. Familiar astronomical facts are known only in the same way, except by those
who have studied astronomy. It is obvious that every one’s knowledge would be very
limited indeed, if we were not justified in accepting facts on the authority of others.
But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we can safely accept
must be capable of demonstration or verification. The examples I have given belong to
this class. The boy can verify when he goes to France or is able to read a French book
that the facts which he took on authority are true. I am confronted every day with

evidence which proves to me that, if I took the trouble, I could verify the existence of
Calcutta for myself. I cannot convince myself in this way of the existence of
Napoleon, but if I have doubts about it, a simple process of reasoning shows me that
there are hosts of facts which are incompatible with his non-existence. I have no doubt
that the earth is some 93 millions of miles distant from the sun, because all
astronomers agree that it has been demonstrated, and their agreement is only
explicable on the supposition that this has been demonstrated and that, if I took the
trouble to work out the calculation, I should reach the same result.
But all our mental furniture is not of this kind. The thoughts of the average man
consist not only of facts open to verification, but also of many beliefs and opinions
which he has accepted on authority and cannot verify or prove. Belief in the Trinity
depends on the authority of the Church and is clearly of a different order from belief
in the existence of Calcutta. We cannot go behind the authority and verify or prove it.
If we accept it, we do so because we have such implicit faith in the authority that we
credit its assertions though incapable of proof.
The distinction may seem so obvious as to be hardly worth making. But it is
important to be quite clear about it. The primitive man who had learned from his
elders that there were bears in the hills and likewise evil spirits, soon verified the
former statement by seeing a bear, but if he did not happen to meet an evil spirit, it did
not occur to him, unless he was a prodigy, that there was a distinction between the two
statements; he would rather have argued, if he argued at all, that as his tribesmen were
right about the bears they were sure to be right also about the spirits. In the Middle
Ages a man who believed on authority that there is a city called Constantinople and
that comets are portents signifying divine wrath, would not distinguish the nature of
the evidence in the two cases. You may still sometimes hear arguments amounting to
this: since I believe in Calcutta on authority, am I not entitled to believe in the Devil
on authority?
Now people at all times have been commanded or expected or invited to accept on
authority alone—the authority, for instance, of public opinion, or a Church, or a
sacred book—doctrines which are not proved or are not capable of proof. Most beliefs

about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific observation, have served
directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected
by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using
their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbour disbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a
sceptic denies that Napoleon existed, or that water is composed of oxygen and
hydrogen, he causes amusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot
be demonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortality of the
soul, he incurs serious disapprobation and at one time he might have been put to
death. Our mediaeval friend would have only been called a fool if he doubted the
existence of Constantinople, but if he had questioned the significance of comets
he might have got into trouble. It is possible that if he had been so mad as to deny the
existence of Jerusalem he would not have escaped with ridicule, for Jerusalem is
mentioned in the Bible.
In the Middle Ages a large field was covered by beliefs which authority claimed to
impose as true, and reason was warned off the ground. But reason cannot recognize
arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, without being untrue to herself. The universe of
experience is her province, and as its parts are all linked together and interdependent,
it is impossible for her to recognize any territory on which she may not tread, or to
surrender any of her rights to an authority whose credentials she has not examined and
approved.
The uncompromising assertion by reason of her absolute rights throughout the
whole domain of thought is termed rationalism, and the slight stigma which is still
attached to the word reflects the bitterness of the struggle between reason and the
forces arrayed against her. The term is limited to the field of theology, because it was
in that field that the self-assertion of reason was most violently and pertinaciously
opposed. In the same way free thought, the refusal of thought to be controlled by any
authority but its own, has a definitely theological reference. Throughout the conflict,
authority has had great advantages. At any time the people who really care about
reason have been a small minority, and probably will be so for a long time to come.
Reason’s only weapon has been argument. Authority has employed physical and

moral violence, legal coercion and social displeasure. Sometimes she has attempted to
use the sword of her adversary, thereby wounding herself. Indeed the weakest point in
the strategical position of authority was that her champions, being human, could not
help making use of reasoning processes and the result was that they were divided
among themselves. This gave reason her chance. Operating, as it were, in the enemy’s
camp and professedly in the enemy’s cause, she was preparing her own victory.